


The Moving Finger Writes

by strangepromises (juliet)



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Gen, in memoriam, sga_flashfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-14
Updated: 2009-11-14
Packaged: 2017-10-02 17:39:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/juliet/pseuds/strangepromises
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You write what you need to, and you turn the page.  Written for the sga_flashfic In Memoriam challenge.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Moving Finger Writes

_The moving finger writes, and having writ, moves on -- Omar Khayyam_

John wonders sometimes what the pages in his will say. There's a couple of shelves of them in the room out towards one of the piers that isn't a chapel of rest. One book for each person they've lost.

Elizabeth tentatively suggested once, in a senior staff meeting near the start of the second year, when there was already a full shelf of books, putting a list up in there. Like on war memorials, she didn't say. John remembers looking down silently at his tablet. He didn't -- doesn't -- need a list to remember every name. even the ones he barely even met before they were gone. He's a soldier; he doesn't blame himself. He just remembers.

"I -- it would just get longer," Carson had said, almost inaudibly, and no one else had said anything at all, and Elizabeth had nodded and left it.

So instead the books keep stacking up alongside each other. No one looks through them; that's not what they're for. You write what you need to, and you turn the page, and you don't look back at what was written before you.

The more recent ones are better quality, John has noticed. They can get stationery supplies from Earth, now, and the Agalsi on M2K-556 make blank books, with dark green and red covers. For a while in the first year, while they were cut off from Earth and had next to no trading partners (and no resources to trade for luxuries like paper), they were down to using science notebooks, a couple of military exercise books. John can see their spines up on the top shelf, when he looks.

He struggles with words, always has. But each time, whoever it was, soldier or civilian, he goes up late at night to the quiet not-chapel and writes. His watch; his city; his people. Sometimes he sees Rodney going in or coming out, face uncharacteristically still. They don't look at each other. He knows that Elizabeth always writes on the first page, although he's never been there to see her do it.

John writes the words that each of his people deserve, and turns the page, and doesn't look back.


End file.
